'Do I feel guilty? Nope': Distribution center employee steals £18,000 from a mega-corporation through a phony return loophole, ends up with enough cash to put a downpayment on a house before quitting

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Apr 15, 2025 10:00 AM EDT

Corporations make so much money, it's a little disgusting. 

Heavy on the shoulders of the working man, the burden of keeping the business afloat rides on exploited managerial staff, disheartened blue-collar workers, and a pathetically overworked break room coffee pot. If only there were some way for us little guys to get back at the big man… 

Well, if you have a morality blind spot and a lot of time on your hands in the warehouse, you could be like this criminally clever distribution center employee who discovered a particularly frugal loophole in the returns department. 

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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • After clocking in years of unpaid overtime, barely using your PTO, and bowing at the feet of your indentured servitude, being a factory worker starts to get infuriating. Stocking shelves with a forklift was fun the first time you did it, but after thousands of hours logged behind the wheel and after repetition-injuries start to set in your joints, you question whether this career path was the right choice. But when the corporate suits upstairs hardly know what's going on on the factory floor, perhaps there's some way to score some extra skrilla on the side—legally or otherwise.

  • "I stole thousands from my employer and got away with it."

    As you can probably guess from the title I found a gap in procedures and exploited the h I out of it. I wouldn't call it a loop hole, just a gap and the apathy of others.
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  • Circa 2005 I worked for a compay which sold bits and bobs of everything both in store and online. I did stints in the main distribution centre dealing with returns but mainly worked in store as a shift manager.
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  • Part of that role was dealing with returns which included things customers bought online. Big thing of the returns was that any item £10 or under which was opened
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  • was written off as waste and binned. If it was an online purchase it didn't require a physical receipt just confirmation from manager (me) that it was one of our products. This was also before
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  • refunds and returns could be done online. They could only be done in store. Bonus was that the refunds for online purchases could either be onto original payment card or in cash.
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  • Guess what i started doing. I started doing dodgy returns for non existent items. I also knew that the binned returns were sent to the distribution centre and binned from there and never truly counted
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  • (minimum wage, minimum effort) so stock counts were always off I only ever did small items and around £30 a day that i did it for. did this successfully for 3 years
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  • and netted £17-18k ish cash and used it for my every day purchases and little bits went into saving account. Left after that and was able to put a deposit on a house and I wouldn't have been able to do that otherwise.
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  • Do i feel guilty? Nope. Would i do it again? No, but mainly because there wouldn't be anyway that I could get away with it. Do I feel sorry for companies which have a problem with theft by employees?
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    via cottonbro studio

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • No, mainly because they create the conditions which allow it to occur and thrive. In my experience employee theft happens because they hate the company or do not earn enough to live. The companies
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  • first reaction will always be to clamp down and tighten procedures to make it harder while ignoring the root cause. Why are your employees stealing? What can you do to make your employees not
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  • want to steal in the first place? Raise wages? Improve conditions? Improve mangers interpersonal skills? How about share incentives or profit sharing giving you employees some skin in the game.
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  • Whenever I hear of a company with a employee theft problem I automatically assume they must be terrible to work for and I have zero sympathy.
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  • Conrad This is pretty common, even today. I know someone who works in a shop that sells everything, jewellery, PlayStations, ovens, pretty much everything that isn't edible.
    via Conrad
  • Some people (not me obviously) buy empty cases for things like consoles really cheap off ebay, then "return" them to a mates shop and get a full refund for a new console.
    via Conrad
  • AFartInAnEmpty Room One time In College I worked with an older dude who also managed a warehouse. Said there were always products where the shopper didn't pay and they ended up sitting in the warehouse
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  • forever. Eventually after like a year, he would take them and get me to sell them on eBay since he didn't know anything about the internet. We'd split the profits in half.
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  • Lonely_Speaker_9176 I've done some crazy stuff in hard times in order to get by. It's basically about survival at that point. That said, I hope I never have to steal again because I don't like how it feels.
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  • Starletbliiss Honestly u just exposed how bad the structure was and how little they cared to fix it. it's wild that u pulled it off for 3 yrs without anyone noticing, like that's not
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  • even just on u, that's on their whole ops being sloppy af. not sayin it's right, but i get how ppl snap when they work that treat them like dirt. jobs
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  • companies always cryin abt theft but never wanna talk abt why ppl feel driven to do that. if u paid ppl decent n gave a reason to stay loyal, they wouldn't even think abt stealing in the first place.
    via Starletbliiss

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boss worker employee manager job distribution center work coworkers working corporations ceo employees minimum wage supervisor workplace company blue collar coworker business warehouse 13
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